As a Pearl Jam fan this was a homerun for me. I have been following them since they came out and this book brought back a lot of memories of them and the 90s. Highly recommend this one!

Having not known a ton about pearl jam, but loving their music, this book was everything I hoped it would be and more. I felt transported to the 90s. I felt this gave a great overview of the culture of the time and great insight to the band, other bands, and issues at the time!

Great Great read. Highly recommend to not just PJ fans but music fans in general. Well done! Thank you for the ARC. I've been telling everyone about this book

I can distinctly remember the MTV world premier of “Alive” and “Evenflow” and remember being instantly hooked which rarely happened. I was about the same age as the author, Steven Hayden, and found so much of what he wrote relatable to my own journey as a Pearl Jam fan. This was an interesting, informative and nostalgic look not only at Pearl Jam’s career but at what it was like being a teenager at the time.

This book does a great job telling the story of Pearl Jam through a pop culture lens. You do not get a complete Pearl Jam biography, but Hyden covers every part of their career. You get a great sense of who Pearl Jam are as a band and why they are important.
The book goes chronologically through Pearl Jam’s career with the author expanding on favorite songs are moments. My favorite parts of the book are the Pop Culture side bars. Some of my favorite parts of the book include the creation of the song “Hunger Strike” and later analogies of the careers of Chris Cornell and Eddie Vedder, the comparison of Stone Temple Pilots and Pearl Jam and their career trajectories and shared personnel, detailed descriptions of Pearl Jams attempt to tour without Ticketmaster, and the “Jeremy” video and its impact on Pearl Jams career.
I enjoyed reading the book and found myself frequently searching Youtube or online articles to get more information on what I had read. I am not sure if this is mostly common knowledge to Pearl Jam fans , but it was new information to me.
I will agree with some other readers that it felt like some of the passion of the first half of the book lost momentum when discussing Pearl Jams later career. I was a fan of “Ten” like most teenagers in the early 90’s but had not listened to a full Pearl Jam album since “Vs.” when I picked up the self titled 2006 album and kept up with their career from there. I did not feel the same passion reading about the later albums as the earlier albums, which probably speaks more to the cultural impact than the writing
If you are a fan of music or reads about a bands pop culture impact, you will enjoy this book. Recommended.

I remember the first time I heard "Ten" by Pearl Jam. It was such an amazing recording, but my college boyfriend refused to lend it to me because he felt that it was an underground, indie album that wouldn't be readily available. Months later, when we were no longer together, I laughed at the monster hit it became, and I have been a fan ever since.

In Steven Hyden's latest book, Long Road, he takes a look at the long and sometimes challenging journey Pearl Jam has taken to solidify their longevity in the world of music. I've read many of the author's books. In fact, one awaits me on my tablet. I'm a committed fan of his as well as Pearl Jam, so I was thrilled to receive a copy of the book. This did not disappoint.

Although I consider myself a Pearl Jam fan, I fell out of listening to anything beyond Yield. We own all their subsequent albums, but we never really listened to them more than once. I've never seen them in concert, and when I did hear live material on SiriusXM, for example, I wasn't wowed. But Hyden makes those concerts come alive, and now I feel like, what have I been missing.

I love that Hyden wove his own feelings and opinions about the genre that Pearl Jam originated from and his experiences as a fan of the band. He tells his own stories while relating the events that started the band and ushered them through the tumultuous years of stardom and notoriety. Some years maybe would be their last, but they continued to persevere despite the critics and naysayers.

And I like that this only loosely goes in a linear, chronological order. News events and life events, both on the front page of the news and involving the band, make up the chapters. I really loved that, but, I suspect, that some readers may prefer a solid route to Pearl Jam's status today.

I also felt blindsided that I never knew the whole "Momma-Son" theme from Ten. I had absolutely no idea, I just knew that I loved the album. It was enlightening and somewhat disturbing to find out, but the songs stick with you and now offer more than just a story. Like the song, "Alive," which has taken on a completely different context because it's a bonding event at concerts.

I really enjoyed this book, and it made me want to crank up Pearl Jam and relive the amazement I felt when I first heard their seminal album. If you're a Pearl Jam fan, read this book.

I'm Gen X and in my city, you were either Team Nirvana or Team Pearl Jam. My friends and I were all for Nirvana (RIP Cobain!) and absolutely hated PJ, especially Eddie Vedder. What a pompous ass poseur, we'd yell, throwing shit at the TV when Even Flow and Jeremy would come on, AGAIN, on MTV.

This book brought back all those memories, especially since it was written by a guy very clearly sitting in Camp PJ, or should I say, Camp Eddie. The whole thing was less about how PJ helped shape our lives and helped form Gen X's "soundtrack" than a long suckup to how great Eddie Vedder is. It should have been advertised as his biography, because it's focused solely on him. We don't learn very much at all about the other members.

It's like reading a too-long Rolling Stone article, except that the author didn't even interview Eddie. Everything was taken from other sources and extrapolated by the author. I did see PJ live back in their heyday and it was fucking MAGNIFICENT. Unbelievable. It may have even topped Nine Inch Nails on the Downward Spiral tour, it was that incredible. But this book doesn't capture that energy at all - it's like a fan boy's journal endlessly talking about Vedder and trying to prove to the world that he is NOT an arrogant ass poseur. Spoiler alert: my friends and I were right.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.

Long Road is a biography of Pearl Jam and how the writer has felt about them since the early 90s. While this is a biography of Pearl Jam with their history both personal and professional, more so Eddie Vedder's personal history than any of the other members, the author does spend a decent amount of time including his personal opinions. Hyden breaks the chapters up by chunks of events, albums, and songs. He talks about the background of the songs, some of the controversies that have occurred, other contemporary artists, as well as how some of the early fame and responses to the music impacted the band.

This book feels more like a biography written after the subjects were gone because there seems to be no quotes from friends, family, contemporaries, or the artists themselves. At the end of the book I felt more like this was an exploration of how Hyden feels about Pearl Jam and how it has shifted over the years. It was not bad and I learned things about the band and the music but I do not know that I would recommend this one.

What a treat to get so much history from a huge music fan, particularly a Pearl Jam fan. I was in college when they became popular and my roommate played their album over and over again so I’ve always had a soft spot for this band. This book gives you the history of the band, as well as each individual member, and how their rise to stardom was accepted and affected music as a whole. I am not the biggest music fan but I do love stories about how people achieved their fame and this book does not disappoint. Hyden does a fantastic job of drawing you in and wanting to love them as much as he does.

Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack is a deep dive into the band's history. Finding their place in the music scene, touring, awards, pop culture, & their dynamic and relationship with many other bands.
From the moment they hit the scene I have been a Pearl Jam fan. I keep all of their music, as well as Eddie's collaborations and solo work, on my playlists. A Pearl Jam concert ranks pretty high up on my bucket list. This book is a great behind the scenes look at their concerts but is so much more than I expected. This book is a history of Pearl Jam but also a history of rock and roll and sneak peek at other Rock & Roll bands of the same era.
Thank you to Hachette Books and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for my honest review. 4 stars.

The writing is good, but the book is more the author’s personal thoughts on the band vs. interviews of others. My assumption was that it would include interviews so that is my fault for assuming what the book would be. I enjoyed the perspective but couldn’t get past the lack of various perspectives and theories about what the band went through.. However It’s very thorough an in depth analysis

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Hachette Books for a copy of this history and study of one of my favorite bands, and their cultural impact.

Like many people I have a few Pearl Jam stories. Discovering the band of all place on NPR, rekindling my interest in vinyl albums when Vitalogy album came out and my independent record store owner gave me a deal on it, as he still felt bad not selling my the VS. album on the first day as he was out. Watching them perform with Neil Young on the MTV Music Awards on Rocking in the Free World and losing my mind at how amazing it was. I really loved this band. As I got older music wasn't as much a part of my life, and I still liked them, but didn't love them, nor did I feel that feeling that I did when I was young, and buying European singles, fan club exclusives and shelf loads of bootlegs. Until I started reading this book. Steven Hyden in Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation captures what made me love this band so much, not a rock biography more a cultural study of an era that even though I got off the bus, is still chugging on today.

The book is broken into two parts Side A, and Side B. The chapters are named after songs of the band, and cover various aspects of the band, from early days up to the pandemic. This sounds odd, but I have noticed in rock biographies that the book is great when they are struggling, and gets boring when the band sells out 50,000 seat arenas. Band struggles are fun, waning fame is not. This style gives Hyden a chance to solo on specific ideas, repeat a chorus to make a point in various chapters and bridge the band's history from beginning to end. The looking at moments and not chronology really helps keep the book fresh and different, which in music books is great, as music books all seem to follow the same path, and can get dull. Love, faith, controversies, losses in family, friends, and even fans are covered, Ticketmaster woes, fame, and their evolution are examined. And the music is given a lot of time in the spotlight.

Hyden has a real gift for keeping this book all jazzy and free, yet with a specific goal. To write about a band that it is still finding itself, without making this a retrospective of an oldies act. Using live and bootleg recordings as a primary source in many ways is a great decision, especially for a band that tends to not want to share with media or anyone outside their circle for that matter. The book might float and repeat itself a few times from chapter to chapter, but these stories are of the band at that time, and sometimes repetition is good. And the discussions of what makes the band, the songs and their power, and even more so now their interpretation is very interesting, and educational.

This is the third book that I have read by Steven Hyden, I recommend his writing, but Twilight of the Gods is one of my favorites, and really enjoyed them all. Hyden likes music, something that more that once in many books on bands or music, I have wondered about the author. And he likes this band. For the first time in quite a while I found myself looking at my music collection as something other than crap I should do something with ie, toss out, or my heirs will do it for me, and I thought, hmm I wonder if I have that show Hyden mentioned. Or how to I get it. And what vinyl do I have. This book gave me back an interest in music I have not had for a while, and I hope it does the same for others. One of my favorite books this year.

Ebook/non-fiction:. This galley was given to me in lieu of an honest review.
This book is written by a rock critic who has been to lots of concerts. I am me and I haven't been to a rock concert since Winger played at our local civic center back in the 90s.
The author brings up a lot of good points and some trivia I hadn't heard about or only partially heard about. I was raising kids and the internet was barely a thing. I do remember the first time I heard/saw PJ on MTV. That being said, the PJ CDs I was able to afford are all good to me. The author kinda downs the later ones which I do t agree with.
I really liked the book and a majority of the critiques. The timeline the author used was relatable.

'Long Road' deepened my appreciation for Pearl Jam. I enjoyed the intergenerational insights, the thoughtful expression of the author's fandom [obsessing on the 2010 bootlegs!], and enhanced the reading experience by cueing up the songs that inspired the chapters. But the ARC was a *mess*: riddled with factual errors, typos, inconsistencies, etc. I'm always amazed when books get to this stage with SO many mistakes. Hachette folks: I'm available for editing/proofreading!

The book covers Pearl Jam's (so far) 31-year career: roughly chronologically, although each chapter teases out themes that have recurred throughout their time together. It is not a biography of the band, so casual readers are likely not going to be able to follow parts of it. It is not quite a journalistic examination of the band, because Hyden's fandom overwhelms his objectivity at points. Nor is it quite a fan's exploration of what the band has meant to him or other fans. Given all this, I'd say it was a Pearl Jam "experience."

Early on, it was amazing. Hyden evoked what Pearl Jam felt like for many young listeners in the early and mid 90s. I found myself so excited by the detailed descriptions of milestone moments in their career that I toggled between reading chapters and finding YouTube clips so I could relive the moments he was describing.

In some ways, this is the easy part of the Pearl Jam story. There's no shortage of Pearl Jam, "Seattle sound," and alt-rock lore to draw from. And this is key: I have no idea what his sources actually were, beyond materials that were already out there. Hyden is not revealing new information about the band; rather, he is packaging and interpreting existing content. He's a close reader of albums and lyrics, and a speculator about authorial intent. More on this in a bit.

The harder part of the Pearl Jam story is where this book falls down--the "Side B" of their career from Binaural to Gigaton, a period spanning over 20 years and 2/3 of their time as a band. For someone who owns all 70+ bootlegs from the 2000 Binaural tour, Hyden surprisingly fails to capture precisely why this band is unmatched as a live band. All the giddiness I felt in "reliving" key moments through his depictions of their early career felt flat in his assessment of their later years. He cannot capture the magic of their live shows, and he does not seem to fully get the beauty in their later albums. It makes for a real letdown.

Part of this ties to how he's approached his subject--the close reading of music and speculation about why Pearl Jam did what they did. The close reading is cringe-worthy at times, largely because he frequently gets the words wrong. This goes beyond typos: he's building the meaning of his analysis on incorrect reads of lyrics publicly and easily accessible on the band's website. And, look: Eddie Vedder is notoriously easily to mishear, and not just on songs like Yellow Ledbetter, where he turns mumbling into an art form. But if you are going to close-read the text, double check to make sure you get it right. (This happened at least a half-dozen times, and each time I found myself double-checking lyrics that I thought I'd had correct but could very well have misheard in past listens. Per Pearl Jam's self-published lyrics, I did not.)

Yet even when he gets the lyrics right, the close reading of the lyrics and albums is jarring when he becomes judgmental about the quality of the lyrics or songs. In his preface, he says that he's trying to tell a story about the band, how they managed to survive and evolve where so many contemporaries did not (quite literally at times), and how they shaped and were shaped by their generation. His assessment of the quality of the music--particularly for later albums--often runs counter to those themes. He does not clearly articulate why the band could be putting out the so-so music he claims they generated on later albums and still be the band that evolved and survived. In this, he stumbles in meeting the purpose he sets out.

But perhaps the greater misstep here is how he attempts to analyze the members of the band--their probable thoughts, feelings, influences, and motivations. He does not interview the band and makes clear early on that that's not his purpose for the book; he says that they have had their own chance to tell their story in 2011's Pearl Jam Twenty, and he does draw much of his first-person quoting from that book and other published interviews. Yet he regularly attempts to build narratives around not just the music but the band members themselves--primarily Eddie Vedder--based on his own speculation about how they see themselves in their music or in the larger rock pantheon. Frankly, if I wanted that, I would just wait for Pearl Jam Forty.

Moreover, he gets some of his facts wrong. For instance, he claims that Pearl Jam never covered Mother Love Bone's "Chloe Dancer" with "Crown of Thorns"--a claim at the foundation of his speculation about Stone and Jeff's posthumous relationship with Andy Wood. It's also a claim that is factually incorrect and easily checked, since Pearl Jam has on their website a list of every song they've played and when they played it. His assertion (already a somewhat specious take) completely falls apart. This happens a various points in the text.

Lastly, this book overly centers Eddie Vedder; given that I am like the heart-eyes emoji for Eddie and pretty much always have been, I am surprised to be saying this. I love the Into the Wild soundtrack, and have seen his solo shows many times. Eddie is a wonderful performer, but his musical longevity does not stem from his solo work. Nor does PJ's longevity stem strictly from the musical chops each band member brings to the table. There are a few important nods to what Jeff and Stone had to do to make this band work in a way Mother Love Bone probably would not have, had Andy Wood survived. And oddly, for all the focus on Eddie as the benevolent dictator of the band, Hyden misses how Eddie had to give up control in the same way that Stone and Jeff did to keep the band alive. He also skimmed over all the other work that the rest of the band has done: their solo or side projects, their other artistic and philanthropic endeavors, etc. Had Hyden done more of this, it would have been a much more interesting and relevant book, because it's the work outside the band's albums that has significantly contributed to their ability to continually gravitate back together.

I wanted to love this book, and if you had asked me to write this review around the time he was describing the Vs. or Vitalogy eras, I would have given it 4 or 5 stars. Hyden just tries to do too much here, deviates too often from his named purpose, and gets a bit sloppy in his analyses. It's not a bad read for a Pearl Jam fan, but perhaps it should be read less as a deep or definitive read of the band's longevity and more as a fan trying to work through his own feelings about the band, their music, and the 90s music scene.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4862130571

Click the link, or copy and paste it, to see my review.

Thank you for the opportunity to review the long road. I mentioned this title to a customer who loves Pearl Jam and he was super excited about it.

I was so excited to receive an ARC of this from Netgalley because Pearl Jam was the soundtrack to my high school years.

This book does not disappoint. Using 18 of the band's songs, the author tells the story of the band. Pearl Jam fans and Gen X fans especially will enjoy this!

Thank you Netgallery for advanced reader’s copy of Long Road, by Steve Hayden. My first Pearl Jam concert was the last footnote in the book. Yes, I’m a little late to the “Jamily”! Steve does a really good job incorporating Pearl Jam stories to his perspectives of the 90’s / early aughts alt rock and grunge scene. He shares the evolution of the band up through Gigaton. Besides highlighting the band’s history he brings readers through how the band has grown through the decades and how their music has, too.

Let me start by saying I love Pearl Jam which is why I requested a copy of this book. I’ve loved watching documentaries on the band and frequently rock out to Ten decades after it has been released. With that said I had high hopes for this book.

However, it fell flat for me. I did learn or maybe I was reminded of things I forgot about the band and their evolution. But through out the book I couldn’t help but feel like the author was trying to please everyone. By this I mean he would point out something negative or unpopular but then in the next sentence would say something like but that’s not a bad thing or that’s what I like about the album..etc. It just felt like he was giving backhanded compliments or just didn’t want anyone to feel like he was disagreeing with their views on the band or album.

I have to commend the author and editors though on the detail and research that went into this book. I mean who wouldn’t want to spend their time watching bootleg videos of Pearl Jam concerts or listening the every Pearl Jam album song by song? Sounds like an enjoyable job to me.

I’d recommend to anyone who really likes reading non-fiction and is a very big Pearl Jam fan.